The European Competitions Thread

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CIES Football Observatory

n°298 - 01/06/2020

Performance

Most productive German Bundesliga players

https://football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2019/wp298/en/

The German Bundesliga was the first major European league to restart after the COVID-19 break. Issue number 298 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presents the players with the best statistics during current season for eight different indicators according to the data provided by our partners OptaPro.

 

Yann Sommer leads the table for the number of saves, Kingsley Ehizibue (Köln) did the most successful tackles, while Omar Mascarell (Schalke 04) and Jamilu Collins (Paderborn) made the most interceptions. Alphonso Davies (Bayern) heads the rankings for successful dribbles, Sven Bender (Bayer) for accurate passes, Christopher Nkunku (RB Leipzig) for assists having led to attempts and Robert Lewandowski (Bayern) for shots.

Union Berlin’s centre forward Sebastian Andersson won more than twice aerial duels than the second player who won the most: 210 compared to 102. This astonishing figure is related to the style of play of his team, which fields the tallest line-ups in Europe, as illustrated by the exclusive CIES Football Observatory Demographic Atlas.

Most productive German Bundesliga players, by indicator

Season 2019/20, matches played until 28/05/2020. Data : OptaPro

 

 

many more stat categories at the top link

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Relentless Bayern are seriously good again – and will only get better

https://theathletic.com/1835794/2020/05/27/honigstein-bayern-munich-bundesliga-champions-league/

Thomas Muller, as usual, summed it up succinctly. “It maybe wasn’t our best performance with the ball,” the Bayern Munich forward said. “But we played with the heart — and that’s the most important thing.”

Tuesday night’s showdown with Borussia Dortmund — a largely even, edgy contest that felt pleasantly out of sync with its empty, silent surroundings — wasn’t the kind of free-flowing performance we have come to admire under head coach Hansi Flick. Bereft of Thiago’s passing brilliance in the centre, Bayern had far less of the ball than they would have liked but made up for it with effort, basic competence and magnum-sized big-game mentality.

It sounded suspiciously like a back-handed compliment when Joshua Kimmich opined that Dortmund had been more courageous than anticipated in their set-up and that they had benefitted from playing without the crowd. “They have technically outstanding footballers — you can keep a bit calmer without fans,” Kimmich said. Calmness doesn’t really help you, though, if you don’t get the breaks and run out of ideas against an opponent whose confidence appears unshakable.

Bayern came to the Signal Iduna Park to defend their title with the grim, unflustered determination of an alpha gorilla fending off a challenge from nifty youngsters lacking the weight to deliver a telling blow. The visitors had more muscle and more stature. They could punch down, rather than up. In the end, Kimmich’s moment of brilliance and a superb work-rate (exemplified by Kimmich himself, who bagged a new Bundesliga record for the season when he covered 13.7km) were enough to essentially secure an eighth title in a row. There would have to be an unprecedented collapse for Bayern to squander a seven-point gap with six games to go. It won’t happen, not to this team. They’re too relentless, too well-prepared.

Tellingly, even the game’s one outstanding moment of creative ingenuity had been partially preconceived at the club’s HQ of Saebener Strasse, a place that must increasingly look like Mordor to the rest of the league.

Flick had told his men to keep an eye on Dortmund keeper Roman Burki, who often strayed off his line. Kimmich chipped him without looking up. The Switzerland international’s weak wrist robbed the effort of some of its audacious beauty but as championship-clinching strikes go, it will certainly do. “I’m happy that Kimmich had listened well,” Flick said, laughing.

Flick has now equalled Pep Guardiola’s record of winning 15 of his first 18 league games. It’s a stunning statistic considering Flick had never coached in the Bundesliga before. Like all Bayern coaches in this century, he will be judged on results in the Champions League but he’s already won the club’s respect. Flick, a former assistant of Joachim Low with the German national team, has managed to unite the dressing room while sticking with a fixed starting XI and reinstalling the possession and pressing principles that underpinned their renaissance at European level. They’re not just better than the other domestic contenders — they’re back among the best in Europe.

There is, as there always is with Bayern, an element of being too big to fail. Only Bayern can buy an €80 million defender (Lucas Hernandez) and not worry too much if he gets injured and only starts a quarter of their league games. Only they can appoint the wrong coach (Nico Kovac) and win back-to-back titles because the opposition is too inconsistent and their own players’ inherent drive is so high.

After their shamefully inept Champions League elimination by Liverpool last season, Kovac had lost the last few crumbs of respect he had commanded in the dressing room but instead of downing tools, the big names called a meeting (without Kovac) and decided that they had no choice but to go on and win the double, despite the Croat’s worst efforts.

It’s only when the dressing-room leaders realised that their professionalism had unwittingly kept Kovac in the job for a second campaign that morale sagged. Results were so ordinary in the first third of this season — five wins, three draws, two defeats — that the prospect of an eighth title was slipping away. Their 5-1 defeat at the hands of Eintracht Frankfurt in November was a silent cry for imminent help.

Other clubs might have taken a more benign view of the situation. Getting rid of Kovac, a double-winner, might have been perceived as ungrateful, as well as slightly unnecessary. You can’t win the league every year, can you?

But they see things differently in Munich. Not winning is essentially intolerable, just short of a crime. As soon as the club understood that the team didn’t believe in Kovac’s ability to help them keep winning, they had no qualms getting rid of him. It’s what they have been doing ever since the 1990s football boom, fuelled by TV money, cemented their position as the wealthiest and therefore most successful club in Germany. Flick will become the third coach after Franz Beckenbauer (1994) and Jupp Heynckes (2018) to win the league after coming in as a caretaker midway through a campaign.

The uncomfortable truth is that Bayern are likely to get better next season, once Leroy Sane provides a cutting edge on the left and an attacking right-back is added. All their big, important names are expected to stay, as they have done since Toni Kroos was erroneously sold to Real Madrid. Keeping winners attracts more winners in a self-perpetuating process.

Unlike at Dortmund or RB Leipzig, players don’t arrive in Munich to get ready for the next step. It’s already their final destination, a golden cage filled with new treasures each year, in recognition of the incessant pressure. The only ones who leave are those who cannot handle it, which further breeds a culture of mandatory glory. With Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Oliver Kahn in charge — men who find the idea of coming second almost physically revolting — there is, unfortunately for the everybody else, little danger of winners’ fatigue setting in.

Winning their eighth title in a row will only reinforce Bayerns’s determination to secure a hegemony that isn’t just unprecedented in German football but all of history: an empire that never ends.

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PSG have a world-class academy. So why do so many graduates have to play elsewhere?

https://www.espn.co.uk/football/paris-saint-germain/story/4103544/why-academy-stars-fail-to-make-it-at-psg

When it comes to Paris Saint-Germain's young stars and their exits from the club, the list is long, and all indications suggest it will keep getting longer and longer. Last summer Paris Saint-Germain sold Moussa Diaby (Bayer Leverkusen), Stanley N'Soki (Nice), Christopher Nkunku (RB Leipzig), Timothy Weah (Lille) and Arthur Zagre (AS Monaco) for a combined amount of €54 million.

None of them was older than 21, and all had arrived at the club between the ages of 12 and 15.

A year earlier, it was Jonathan Ikone (Lille), Odsonne Edouard (Celtic) and Yacine Adli (Bordeaux) who were sold all together for just less than €20m. That same summer, Claudio Gomes, one of the most promising talents in PSG's U19 team, was poached by Manchester City after he decided not to sign his first professional contract in Paris.

In 2017, Dan-Axel Zagadou (Borussia Dortmund), Boubakary Soumare (Lille), Fode Ballo-Toure (Lille) and Mahamadou Dembele (FC Salzburg) did the same. No professional contracts, no first-team appearance, no fees, no goodbyes.

And before that, there also were Matteo Guendouzi (Lorient), Kingsley Coman (Juventus), Mike Maignan (Lille), Moussa Dembele (Fulham) and many more. Despite Paris being their hometown, PSG their club and the Parc des Princes their dream, they decided to leave almost as soon as they could.

This is nothing new. The pioneer was Nicolas Anelka, who left for Arsenal in February 1997 at the age of 17 for hardly any money.

In 2008, the more unknown Gael N'Lundulu, then a promising striker, signed for Portsmouth, at the time an upwardly mobile Premier League side. In 2009, Chris Mavinga joined Liverpool. Both were promising academy products, and both moved on free transfers.

Seeing their best young talent leave for next to nothing, some without even playing for the first team, was never part of the PSG plan. So what's gone wrong?

snip

 

[MoroccanBlue 5,382]

As things stand, City are still going to be banned from Europe for 2 seasons, correct?

[Milan 17,957]

3 minutes ago, MoroccanBlue said:

As things stand, City are still going to be banned from Europe for 2 seasons, correct?

Manchester City’s appeal against a two-year ban from European football will to be heard by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on June 8-10.

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1 hour ago, Milan said:

Manchester City’s appeal against a two-year ban from European football will to be heard by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on June 8-10.

They better receive that punishment....anything else and Clubs should just say fuck it and destroy ffp.

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Bayer Leverkusen  vs Bayern Munich   HD Streams

http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/bundesliga-bayer-leverkusen-vs-bayern-munchen-s1/

https://www.totalsportek.com/bayern-munich/

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fuck

Havertz is out with a slight muscle injury

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7 minutes ago, Vesper said:

fuck

Havertz is out with a slight muscle injury

Yeah tough luck man.....

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1 minute ago, Atomiswave said:

Yeah tough luck man.....

still multiple players to watch for targets
 
 12 Edmond Tapsoba
 9 Leon Bailey
 19 Moussa Diaby

 

and Alaba
 

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Coman diving like Salah

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wooot 1 nil

Alario

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Boateng burnt like toast

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14 minutes ago, Vesper said:

still multiple players to watch for targets
 
 12 Edmond Tapsoba
 9 Leon Bailey
 19 Moussa Diaby

 

and Alaba
 

Bailey doesnt interest me but the others for sure

4 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Boateng burnt like toast

His stock has gone way down

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arff 1 1

Coman

[Special Juan 28,141]

Upemacano sent off

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meh

1 2

Leon Goretzka

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No chance Bayern was losing this anyway....they own that league.

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1 3

Gnabry

Bayern are the best team on the planet atm

especially when they get their 2 main CB¨s back

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18 minutes ago, Vesper said:

1 3

Gnabry

Bayern are the best team on the planet atm

especially when they get their 2 main CB¨s back

I reckon AM would bother them big time.